Carmel estate liquidator gets year in jail for embezzlement

A former Carmel real estate agent who embezzled $242,000 worth of property — including an antique Russian soup tureen that sold for $86,000 — has been been sentenced to a year in jail.

Joseph H. Rousso, 59, was also ordered to pay full restitution to victims after he pleaded no contest to six felony counts of embezzlement.

Rousso's sentencing was announced by the Monterey County District Attorney's Office on Tuesday. He was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Julie Culver.

He was arrested in September 2011 after a seven-month investigation by Carmel police and the District Attorney's Office into his actions as owner of Estate Liquidation and Appraisal Service of Carmel.

In the business, he sold personal property on consignment on behalf of people liquidating the estates of deceased relatives. Over several years, he allegedly pocketed money belonging to victims and was the target of several civil suits.

In the criminal case, Rousso was originally charged with allegations that 10 victims lost $242,386 to embezzlements.

At one point, Rousso took a 19th century antique soup tureen to Christie's Auction House in London and sold it for more than $86,000, prosecutors said. He failed to pay the victims and told them he still had the tureen.

Many clients who hired Rousso were bereaved and trying to deal with parents' estates from as far away as Virginia, Carmel police said at the time of his arrest.

In two cases, police investigator Warren Poitras said in 2011, Rousso claimed clients' valuable paintings had been sent to individuals in San Diego and Memphis, but remained unsold. He showed clients some email exchanges between himself and the two "buyers," but it turned out the messages went to the same email address, Poitras said.

"Those people did not exist," he said. "We served a search warrant on the account. The email address belonged to him."

Rousso sold the paintings, Poitras said, but didn't tell his clients.

For more than two decades, Rousso has been well known to locals for his real estate and appraisal businesses — and for his company's friendly slogan, "We're the guys in the red shirts." Besides his Carmel office, Rousso's company kept now-defunct offices in Los Gatos and Belmont. Investigators said they found no evidence of problems with clients in those cities.

The case began with Monterey County civil court filings alleging Rousso did not pay the clients or paid a portion of what was owed after selling off their estates. Rousso often represented himself in court and did little to dispute most of the claims, court records show.

He ended up owing more than $160,000 in uncontested judgments by the time police filed criminal charges.

Rousso has paid about $80,000 of the restitution, said Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon. If he doesn't pay full restitution or if he violates terms of his probation, he could be sent to prison for eight years and four months.

The original prosecutor in the case took maternity leave as the case was ending, and, as a result, there was no media announcement made at the time of the June 7 sentencing, Brannon said.